EDP Renewables and ENGIE Partner with CPPIB on Winning Offshore Wind Development Lease in the Morro Bay Area
Posted on 12/12/2022
Madrid-based Ocean Winds (OW) is an international company dedicated to offshore wind energy and created as a 50-50 joint venture, owned by EDP Renewables and ENGIE SA. EDP and ENGIE combined their offshore wind assets and project pipeline to create OW in 2019.
Ocean Winds and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments) formed an offshore wind joint venture called Golden State Wind. Golden State Wind was awarded an 80,418-acre lease area by the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) in the Morro Bay area off the central coast of California. The lease area awarded, OCS-P 0564, is one of five sites off the coast of California that was the subject of an auction held by BOEM. This auction is particularly notable as it is the first floating offshore wind lease sale in the United States, and the first offshore wind lease sale of any kind, on the West Coast of the U.S.
Ocean Winds was involved in the development and operation of Windfloat Atlantic, the world’s first fully commercially operational floating offshore wind farm. Ocean Winds has a substantial portfolio of floating projects in Europe and South Korea and is ideally positioned to bring this technology to California.
Golden State Wind’s winning bid for lease area OCS-P 0564 was US$ 150.3 million, with OW and CPP Investments each maintaining a 50% investment in the project. When fully built out and operational, the lease area could accommodate approximately 2 GW of offshore wind energy, generating enough energy to power the equivalent of 900,000 homes. This will bring the U.S. and California closer to meeting their clean energy goals of 15 GW of floating offshore wind generation by 2035 in the U.S. and 5 GW by 2030 in California.
As part of Golden State Wind’s winning bid, OW and CPP Investments commit to investing $30 million in workforce development and supply chain initiatives and to work closely with key local stakeholders to maximize the benefits to California from the emerging offshore wind industry.
